“That’s Parker, out of Riverton. He’s got a bladder the size of a grape.”
I considered the coin. “You know the story about Womack and the Central Bank & Trust theft?”
She studied me. “You think I haven’t looked up everything there is to know about him?”
“Then you tell me.”
She unzipped her jacket and took off her hat and tossed it on the seat beside her. “I haven’t read the official transcript, but I checked out all the newspaper articles in Thermop and Riverton. It was a righteous shooting. He pulled these renegade WYDOT guys over just north of the tunnels and one of them had a shotgun, blew out the windshield of Womack’s cruiser. He planted in a one-two position and shot the guy in the chest before he could reload the 12-gauge. The passenger was out by then and fired over the top of the car with a snub-nose; now, you know as well as I do that unless you’re locked in a phone booth with a perp those things are pretty useless, but the guy hits Bobby in the side, busting a rib. Womack returns fire—one shot, right in the head. Two assailants, two men dead on scene.”
“And no bag of Hot Lips Morgan silver dollars?”
“Nowhere to be found.”
“They go through the car?”
“Took it completely apart in a garage in Worland. Nothing.”
“Did they search the canyon?”
She laughed. “It’s twenty miles long, Walt. You could hide an entire town up in here and nobody would ever find it.”
“Yep, but you said the shooting took place just north of the tunnels, as did the two coin incidents.”
“So?”
“So, that means that if they were heading north, they would’ve only been in the canyon a couple of miles before they met Womack.”
“Yeah, but everybody’s been scouring that end of the canyon with metal detectors since 1979. Again, nothing.”
The Cheyenne Nation asked in a low voice, “Do you think Womack took it?”
“No idea.” She studied him. “I mean, it’s convenient, you know?”
“But none of the silver dollars have ever been recovered?”
“Not till about two and a half months ago.”
We both looked at her.
“One at a time.”
Henry handed his Morgans back to her. “Womack was killed about six months later?”
“Yeah, how did you know that?”
“Kimama, the Shoshone/Arapaho medicine woman, told me.”
“He tried to stop an eighteen-wheeler that had lost its brakes. The driver was having a heart attack, and Bobby pulled out in front of the guy, I guess trying to slow him down as he went into the tunnels. Nobody knows why he decided to do something crazy like that, but the truck hit him sideways and drove him into the opening, punched him all the way through to the other side.”
There was another radio call from Shoshoni.
Static. “Unit three, 10-8.”
The trooper looked through the windshield, her eyes steady. “12:34 a.m. I hope he died quick and didn’t burn to death. . . . You know, they say you could feel the concussion all the way across Boysen Reservoir.”
3
“So, you didn’t hear anything?”
I adjusted the Bear’s cell phone on my ear and spoke to Jim Thomas again. “You’ve got a trooper with an irregular bladder.”
“Yeah, Parker. We try and keep the duty meetings short when he’s in attendance.” There was a pause. “You sticking around or heading home?”
“We thought we’d stay one more night just to see if there’s anything to it. Hey, Jim, do you know anything about the Central Bank & Trust Hot Lips silver dollar heist?”
There was a pause. “The Hot Lips what?”
“Just some ancient history. We’ll get back to you if we find anything.”
“Right.”
I hit the red button on the screen and handed the phone back to its owner. “Never heard of it, so you can tell Sam Little Soldier’s grandson Joey to take a powder.”
Henry pursed his lips. “As you wish.”
I studied him. “Something?”
“The young man is very angry.”
“We used to be angry, too.”
“I suppose so.” He looked up at me. “What are you doing today?”
“Don’t you mean ‘we’?”
“No.” He pointed at a blue van that was pulling up beside us in the Paintbrush Inn parking lot. “I am going rafting, and knowing your aversion to white water, I assumed I was going without you.”
“Well, you’re right about that.”
I slid out and shook hands with a wide man in the driver’s seat of the van. “Walt Longmire.”
He smiled broadly, a grin so wide that I thought he might swallow his ears. “Dave Calhoun.”
“You Shoshone or Arapaho?”
“I’m a Sho-Rap.” He grinned again.
I turned back to the Cheyenne Nation. “He’ll be too busy fighting with himself to drown you.”
The Bear made his way around the front of the van. “What are you going to do?”
I saluted in a jaunty fashion. “Have a Marine Corps reunion.”